I was over at WUWT trying to keep up with the article flow. I found that all the topics were ‘new’, so I’ve missed a couple. But I was doggedly reading them all. (I’ve generally given up on reading all the comments. Some articles I’ll skip them all, others I’ll skim a bit. Ones I really care about I’ll read through. Why? Well, it would take all day, every day, to read all of it…)

From my understanding, the plumetting umbral magnetic field is what is so disconcerting about solar cycle 25. It’s normally averages around 3,000 gauss and it’s already fallen to below 2,000 and continues to fall at 70 gauss per year. When it falls below 1500 gauss, there is insufficient magnetic force to hold sunspots together, so they virtually disappear altogether.

It’s now projected that the umbral magnetic field is currently projected to fall below 1500 gauss towards the end of solar cycle 24 around 2018, which I assume is why solar cycle 25 is projected to be so weak.

If all this does happen, at least we’ll have the perfect opportunity to verify the Svensmark Effect on a global scale rather than in some small cloud chamber at CERN….

When at the Chicago conference, I sat in on two presentations about the solar changes. They came to similar conclusions about the date, but from different directions. (One doing Fourier Transforms on solar data, the other looking at changes of solar diameter). The general range was 2020 to 2040 for a ‘cold period’. Another presenter talked about traveling bands of temperature in the Pacific and how it took 18 years for an equatorial change to propagate up to the area of Alaska (and, one presumes, on into the Arctic).

Putting all that together, it looks to me like we can do some Calendar Marking.

2012 – Maya say “I told you so!” as it rains a lot.
2014 – Our present “flat, no warming” turns to “Drop, cold happening”.
2018 – The Sun Goes Blank.
2020 – It gets very cold.
2020 – 2040 the effects propagate toward the poles in the Pacific Ocean, slow continued deepening of cold.
2041 – Onward we have slow warming as the solar cycle kicks in again.
2060 – The warmth makes it up to Alaska and the Arctic.

Yes, it is projecting based on a few threads pulled together, but I think it’s decent projecting. If you are thinking of visiting Alaska or Siberia, I’d suggest getting that trip out of the way soon… In 2020, it would be better to be visiting Brazil… North Brazil, away from the snow of southern Brazil.

That’s my long range calendar prediction and expectations. We are presently almost at solar max for this cycle (yes MAX… if you can call what we have a ‘maximum’ anything) As the article notes: “The heliospheric current sheet tilt angle is currently at 67°. Solar maximum occurs when it reaches 74° – so a little bit further to go.” But not very much further. I’d put it about 2013 mid summer, so winter will be transitional.)

The question that needs to be asked is what kind of change will happen and how fast. We have seen already that the CAGW proponents will happily say that _anything_ was caused by global warming – causing climate change causing .

However, there are some people saying that when the drop comes it will not be incrementally worsening winters, it may well be a sudden change to years without summers and the grow lines moving equatorwards by 1000 miles in less than a decade. That would not be pretty. Indeed, it makes the ‘preppers’ look positively sanguine and logical in their approach. Big cities full of hungry townies who think food comes from supermarkets will not be able to cope and those able to cope would need to protect themselves against said townies.

When you say it gets “very” cold in 2020, exactly how cold are you talking about? I live in Scandinavia, will I find myself under a permanent cover of snow and ice? Or will it “just” be a few happy repetitions of the “year without summer”. Or perhaps just be a couple of degrees colder so that my potatoes won’t grow as much as I would hope?

What I am actually asking is – will food prices rise to levels that we risk large-scale starvation, or are we just looking at rough times?

The temperature charts (see below) indicate alternation of hot and cold years, but just more of them cold. Not a sudden plunge into an ice age glacial event.

I’d love to ‘play it up’ with talk of doom and crisis, but ‘that is just not me’. I’m more driven to ‘reasonable and centered’ by nature. In other words: I don’t panic worth a damn. Yes, I have a load of ‘prudent preparation’ stuff, but little emotional worry.

If I found myself stuck in a snow drift in a blizzard, I’d just inventory what I have and work out a survival strategy (as I did once… Turned heads when I finally got out and walked into a coffee shop in Parka and Wet Suit ;-) I was returning from a winter scuba diving trip… when a surprise blizzard put me in a drift all night long…

So I can be overly optimistic, but then again I’ve also usually succeeded…

@hpx83:

Past is prologue. I’d look up the histories of the last two Major Minimums.
( I like that more than the accepted turn of Grand Minimum as I like Gilbert and Sullivan ;-)

looks a lot like the 1967-9 or 1920s era are about the same as the times of minima.

Though 1850 to 1930 look like they were pretty cold…

I’d expect the added CO2 to help food growth continue better than then, but expect more kale and “Swede Turnips” on the plate and less corn and beans. The potato is a cold area crop, so ought to do OK. Oh. and Fava Beans are cold season, so peas and favas, not ‘common beans’.

When a volcano blows off, we’ll have a ‘year without a summer’, so I’d have a modest food storage plan. It isn’t very hard and is also a great thing to have when ‘between jobs’ or just too lazy to go to the store for sugar at 2 am ;-)

that in retrospect is about 20% over full, and about 50% over if you intend to ‘shelter in place’ at home. Also used during the Loma Prieta quake and a few storms when we were without power for a couple of days.

Do I expect to need all that in the next decade or two? Not for weather events, but maybe for a Great Quake. Then again, I don’t live near the Arctic Circle and down wind of Icelandic volcanoes…

As to ‘speaking German’, I’d suggest learning Portuguese and getting a low cost vacation hut in Brazil outside some not-very-interesting town back a ways from the beach (i.e. someplace cheap and not likely to be busy). Then visit it often. Why? Because it’s Brazil! Warm, good food, pleasant people, low costs. IFF something goes bad in Europe, well, you just don’t bother heading back (or head to Brazil a bit early). IFF nothing goes bad, you have a lot of wonderful times in Brazil on the cheap. Win-Win ;-)

The temperature records make it look like you get warm years and you get cold years. Just many more cold ones than warm ones. Not a long period of relentless ice. Also note that “altitude matters”. If you are 2 km downslope from a retreating glacier, move. If you are on a beach that gets warm some summers, buy a wet suit and put in a patio heater ;-)

For gardening, I’d expect a fairly cheap set of ‘cold frames’ or a greenhouse would more than compensate for any colder years. (VERY cheap greenhouses can be made with long PVC pipe arches and cheap plastic covers.) Or, put another way, if I lived in Sweden, I’d be doing prep for ‘shelter in place’ with a planning level of “one bad year, maybe too”. So a larger heating oil tank AND a natural gas line feed AND a standby electrical generator. Modest greenhouse, with compost heap inside (where it composts better and warms the space). And a collection of ‘saved seeds’ for cold tolerant plants. (If anyone wants info on that, I’m happy to oblige.) I might make sure I’ve got some snow tires and chains for the car, but would not sell it for a Truck. Oh, and I’d make sure I had a good selection of wine put away – insurance against non-vintage years ;-)

The conclusion of the piece offering 3 different scenarios, no of them particularly nice, so take your pick.

1. Anthropogenic Global Warming/Catastrophic AGW. World will continue to warm, perhaps catastrophically, as a result of GHG emissions.
IPCC AR4 worst case estimate for sea level by 2100 is +0.59 meters amsl. End Eemian achieved, at least, 10 times this (if we use +6 meters amsl), almost an order of magnitude more if we use the +45m estimate. End Holsteinian achieved 36 times this predicted excursion (using 21.3 meters amsl), covering the low and high ends of natural, end extreme interglacial, climate noise.
The Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) range for AGW predictions to 2100 come in at a range of 0.1 to 0.03 compared to “normal” end extreme interglacial climate noise. Worst case projections are therefore woefully not anomalous (at best 10% of natural noise), with the projected AGW/CAGW signal scoring a measly 3-10% of normal end extreme interglacial climate noise levels. Such a signal will be difficult to distinguish.

2. Holocene Interglacial (Loutre and Berger, 2003) will “go-long” (perhaps another 50,000 years), outlasting every previous interglacial in the past 5 million years.
“With the end of MIS 11 full interglacial conditions and the start of ice accumulation estimated to have occurred at 395 kyr BP (de Abreu et al., 2005; Ruddiman 2005a, 2007), the precessional alignment would suggest that the Holocene is nearing its end, while the obliquity alignment would suggest it has another 12 000 years to run its course.” (Tzedakis, 2010)
“In essence, this alignment represents a synchronization of the obliquity signal instead of precession, which according to Masson-Delmotte et al. (2006) may be more appropriate, because of the role of obliquity changes in triggering deglaciation especially during intervals of weak precessional variations, as is the case for MIS 11 and 1.” (Tzedakis, 2010)

3. Holocene is a tad over half-a precession cycle old now. If a precession match, it might be “winding-up” to “wind-down”, like all previous end extreme interglacials.
The possibility consequently exists that at perhaps precisely the right moment near the end-Holocene, the latest iteration of the genus Homo unwittingly stumbled on the correct atmospheric GHG recipe to perhaps ease or delay the transition into the next glacial.
We may have actually already “engineered” a “climate security blanket” capable of dealing with:
“The onset of the LEAP (Late Eemian Aridity Pulse) occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416 Wm2, which is the 65oN July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428 Wm2. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the glacial inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.” Sirocko et al (2005)

shows how things are likely to ‘wobble’ on our way into the next ice age. Key points:

1) It is very slow on human term, even when ‘moving fast’. Think ‘generations’, not ‘my lifetime’.

2) There are interesting ‘spike then drop’ behaviours that imply THIS spike was ‘normal’.

3) You can see the dip of the Younger Dryas event clearly. (IMHO it caused the ‘peak clip’ that gives us our long flat stable period as opposed to the mountain peak look of other interglacials. A competing theory is that human produced CO2 is holding off the drop.)

4) Pressures for “downward” are only going to be stronger from here on out. Eventually they win.

(#4 implies that even if YOU stay in Sweden, sending the Grandkids to Brazil would make sense ;-)

@E.M.: We have witnessed something never saw by a human being in thousand of years: The emission (delivery?) of a “discrete amount of energy”, a “Quanta”.
If you see my presentation you´ll see a diagram of something similar:http://www.giurfa.com/unified_field_explained.pptx
Interesting times indeed!

So, my understanding of your presentation, you ought to be able to make an anti-gravity machine (or a 2 x gravity machine… I’m not sure ;-)

So make one and then we’ll have some proof ;-)

BTW, I think the “baby sun” looks more like a small spot of high charge that is repelling the like charged corona. Not seeing mass there so much as absence of glowing mass.

@Jason Calley:

I think you can vent it there even without the detector. Just don’t make a feedback loop of the greenhouse and engine (as oxygen drops the CO level rises) and don’t go in the greenhouse without airing it out first ;-)

I’d likely run the exhaust through a tank of water to both scrub the CO2 / CO and to trap the Nitrates and Sulphates that plants like too… if I were going to do exhaust capture at all, might as well do it all…

FWIW, no less a person that Taylor (of boutique nuclear bomb design fame) figured out that you could make a nice ‘solar power plant’ by putting a sealed greenhouse in the desert and growing sugar cane in it. Feed the cane to a powerplant inside the greenhouse. All the ‘goodies’ from the cane get recycled into the greenhouse. Basically, you load the thing once with water, dirt, and some fertilizer. From then on out it’s a closed system with sunlight in and electricity out….

But I’d probably want that Carbon Monoxide Detector ;-)

Many greenhouses have a ‘stove’ in them for heat and CO2 production. Making it an engine adds Nitrates and some sulphates (less now that we have low sulphur fuel, dang it ;-) and gives electricity too. In both cases there’s a risk of CO poisoning, so I’d be VERY cautious about it. (Personally, I’d have an external ‘air inlet’ for the heater / engine to prevent O2 depletion and CO ramp up. And I’d likely not occupy the space without ventilating first, but I can be paranoid about Carbon Monoxide… And if you EVER feel sleepy, foggy, tired, or headachy, get out of that space PRONTO.)

From Geoff Sharp’s blog: http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50
February Update: A dramatic fall in activity experienced this month with the LSC at 18.4, SIDC 33.1, NOAA unadjusted 50.1 (prov). SIDC for the 11th straight month over counting compared with NOAA, with the difference again moving closer this month. February was another month of heavy speck activity resulting in a substantial difference between the LSC and other counting methods. The magnitude of the fall this month might persuade some to think cycle max has already arrived, time will tell but the current trend is very different to previous cycles, unless we compare with the Group Sunspot Count of SC5.

Talking about predictions.
For several years I follow Piers Corbyn with his Lunar Solar weather forecasts which have become more and more accurate in time and now are presented with the noise to meet his growing confidence.
Yes, if Corbyn gets it right, he will make sure you know it.

He did predict a volcanic eruption to take place, it happened within the predicted time frame but totally missed out on it.
So here it is: 03-12-2012
Southern Japan: Sukurajima Volcano Erupts Violently

EM-
(-;You will be far “too early” if you go to Baja, it will still be very ‘Baja’; and you have all the time you will ever be given to go North to Alaska. It’s amazing how slow time moves and how fast we use it up. If time is ‘relatively’ constant, there must be something very ‘relatively’ weird about people. How can that ‘really’ be ‘true’ if ‘we’ are the ones who determine what is ‘real’ and ‘not’, and we don’t get to chose who our ‘relatives’ are?;-)

@R. de Haan says:
17 March 2012 at 10:48 amHere you go: David Archibald’s Four Horsemen, updated.
So the famous Dr. had its hidden Malthusian heart!
Fortunately those statistics have ALWAYS proven wrong!

adolfogiurfa says:
17 March 2012 at 2:17 pm
@R. de Haan says:
17 March 2012 at 10:48 am
“Here you go: David Archibald’s Four Horsemen, updated.
So the famous Dr. had its hidden Malthusian heart!
Fortunately those statistics have ALWAYS proven wrong!”

I agree with you but the Egyptian famine is underway and his forecasted temperature decline is quite correct. It would have been better if he had sticke to the facts and left out the alarmist approach.

adolfogiurfa says:
17 March 2012 at 2:10 pm
@E.M. Antigravity machine?…It is not possible to invent it …as it has been ALREADY INVENTED: The Montglofier´s Hot Air Ballon was invented in the 18th century.

Not the elegant solution we would need to have a flying Delorean (LOL) but certainly a source of pure delight. Flying a balloon is a great experience and I know what those early pioneers have must have experienced when they first saw their own countryside from the air.

@Dearieme –
Let’s seeeeeeeeeeeee…. Iberia? Hummmmmmmmm… As I recall, last time this happened, two guys and a young woman made it out of Western Europe and linked up, just prior to their total collapse, starvation, and/or death, somewhere near, or just North of, The Bosphorus. In the PBS special I saw, there really weren’t that many that made it. If I were a Berber, Basque, or even a Mexican or Vietnamese, I wouldn’t worry about West Europeans, Nort’e Americanos, or Chinese, I would worry about Maltese Raiders, Panamanian Pirates, and Headhunters from Borneo. And THAT is only during the LAST PHASE of TOTAL COLLAPSE. Once everything is kaput, there’s about 85,000 years of ‘On Your Own’ chaos where family values really do matter.

Oh Dear! Just over your head in LIma… Then again, you ought to feel ‘enlightened’ as the gravity of all those heavenly bodies lifts you…

FWIW, here in California, I’ve had hail today and there is Snow in Southern California. Weather reports are warning of FEET of snow possible in some of the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico (with lots of rain headed to part of Texas)

Yes, we’re under a ‘down loop’ of the jet stream right now. I’m sure the “warmers” will be talking about the “up loop” causing warmth over Florida to Washington DC…

Maybe you need to plot when that alignment happens AND the closest lunar perigee… then watch out for quakes near you…

@Pascvaks:

I’m glad I’m in California (snow, hail and all) and not in Northern Europe or the UK. The cold history there as has been one of rapid and far swings during Major Minima … where California has water swings instead. (Though I am shopping for any even better place, as the economy here is already in near-free fall due to Progressive Policy Stupidity – but I’m being repetitive… and will be much worse if / when things get even colder / dryer…)

Egypt and Iraq ought to end up in some degree of drought, too, IIRC.

Not going to be pretty either side of Italy / Greece / Iberia.

(Wonder if looking at the history of migrations through Iberia would show ‘interesting’ patterns ;-)

Per Balloons:

I’ve flown one (inside Hangar One at Moffitt Field) and been on ground crew. Yeah, it’s fun. But it isn’t strictly an antigravity machine, so much as a buoyancy improver. Otherwise we have to define boats as anti-gravity machines too…

Also I think China has famine and drought in such periods, but need to double check memory against records to be sure. I’d not want to be on an axis that runs anywhere near North Korea to Egypt (and points beyond in Africa) That’s going to be ‘sucky’. Northern Europe will be cold, but livable (perhaps with some food imports from N. America). Canada and Russia will be way cold, but how would anyone notice the difference ;-)

The other big question is how water changes in South America. That history of MegaDrought needs mining for ‘timing vs solar sleepy’ wiggle matching… IIRC the “Maya Zone” starts with floods then ends in a drought but that could be way off as I’m just trying to match things in my head from dates seen in other contexts.

Australia / New Zealand ought to be fine as there’s almost nobody per sq km there ;-)

@ E.M. Oooohhh, good ideas on the engine exhaust into the greenhouse. By the way, looking up Ted Taylor regarding sugar cane, I saw this quote from F. Dyson, “Very few people have Ted’s imagination. … I think he is perhaps the greatest man that I ever knew well. And he is completely unknown.” That, I believe, (and especially considering the source,) is high praise.

I was reminded very strongly a few days ago of exactly how strong the heat transference mechanism of convection is. I have a small greenhouse I built last fall, and since time is limited, I put a good sized front door on it, but no other vents or windows in it. The weather is warming up now and even with the front door wide open it was becoming unbearably hot inside. A couple of days ago, I made a rear window of not quite a square meter in size. Immediately, as soon as I cut the opening and cross flow began, the temperature plummeted, maybe 15 degrees in literally a few minutes. CO2 versus convection? Little Orphan Annie versus Muhammad Ali.

NEW DELHI : At least fifteen people have died this week as a severe cold wave hits southern India, the Times of India reported on Tuesday. Some areas have registered the lowest temperatures in more than 100 years.
The deaths were reported in the districts of Karimnagar, Visakhapatnam, Guntur, Nalgonda and Warangal in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Most of the victims were elderly and homeless people, the newspaper quoted officials and locals as saying.

I can not imagine the AGW shroud waver will not be shouting too loud about this.

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